As Simonyi starts training later this month at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut
Training Center in Moscow, Anousheh Ansari, the Iranian-born sponsor of the
$10 million Ansari X-Prize recovers from her time aboard the space station
last month.

The X-Prize foundation recently turned its attention to discovering a privately-developed lunar lander, as
recently reported.

Today, Allen and Branson have
joined forced in Virgin Galactic, a venture already selling tickets for
short space flights.

But Allen isn't the only Silicon Valley mover-and-shaker dreaming of the
stars. In West Texas, Jeff Bezos, founder of e-tail giant Amazon.com, is
planning to build his own private sub-orbital space facility as part of his
Blue Origin firm.

Until Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic get off the ground, the single source
for Silicon Valley space cadets is Vienna, Virginia-based Space Adventures
Ltd., which had arranged for Simonyi, Ansari and others to catch a ride with
a Russian rocket.

The company, along with offering a quick trip to the
International Space Station, plans trips around the moon and is standing by
to take your reservation for future suborbital spacecrafts.